Angry Birds Go! iOS racing game includes a car that costs $100

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Angry Birds has earned developer Rovio enough money to make whatever games they want. But that hasn’t stopped the company continuing to mine the Angry Birds IP for new revenue streams, with the latest one being Angry Birds Go!–a racing game for iOS.

Angry Birds Go! isn’t officially released until December 11, but received a soft launch in New Zealand today which has revealed some pretty shocking pricing. You see, Angry Birds Go! is a freemium game, and aims to make its money from those dreaded recurring microtransactions.

The game is free-to-play, but as with most freemium titles most of the content is locked away until you start spending money, and limits are in place for certain features. Racing earns you coins in very small quantities that can be used to upgrade your car, but Rovio would much prefer you to buy the premium in-game currency called gems and use them to get more coins faster.

Power-ups are also limited. You can use them free a couple of times, but then you either have to wait for them to become available again, or, you guessed it, buy more gems to unlock them. Those upgrades extend to buying new cars, which range in price based on their capabilities. The most shocking “microtransaction” has to be for the Big Bang Special Edition car, which Rovio want $99.99 for. Ridiculous, right?

If that wasn’t enough in the way of restrictions, your birds also get tired. They have energy, which depletes over the course of five races. After that you have to let them rest or they magically become reinvigorated if you spend some more cash.

Everything about Angry Birds Go! screams “avoid!” to me as it’s more money generator than it is game from initial impressions. With this only being a soft launch, Rovio still has time to tweak how restricted the game is and also to rethink the pricing. Seriously, who thought that charging $100 for an in-game car was a good idea at Rovio?